Tag: photo album corners

Jerome???

Link to today’s stupid installment

Jerome? Wow, you really DO learn something new every day. I’m really enjoying how this Jerome “Bull” Bushka career retrospective flies right in the face of Linda’s sudden concerns re: her husband’s wacky antics. She knew all about his endless litany of football injury-related woes for all these years and only now sees a correlation? Is she really the diabolical monster I always assumed she was or is she just that stupid?

And while I’m bandying these questions about, how about this one: is BanTom the single worst storyteller who ever lived or is there another mad genius out there who’s built an entire career from repeating a simple premise over and over again to the point where that’s all it is? I doubt it’s ever even occurred to anyone else to “write” stories like this, much less actually do it.

“Mary had a little lamb, Mary owned a small sheep, Mary’s lamb was little, lambs are sheep”…”It was the best of times, times were good, it was the worst of times, bad times, good, bad, bad good, time”…see what I mean? It shouldn’t surprise me anymore, but nevertheless, sometimes I an just incredulous that FW even exists at all. It can’t, it shouldn’t, yet here it is, each and every day.

 

Sepia Water-Colored Loss Of Memories

Link to today’s strip

Dick Facey once again steals the show with his always-annoying presence. He looks more disgusted than concerned in panel three. He is impossible to draw in any way that isn’t completely objectionable. And I totally love how Bull’s scrapbook is helpfully labeled as “Bull’s Scrap Book”, just in case he forgets which, ironically enough, he apparently has! Amazing.

This is a rather baffling arc so far. I mean it’s a certainty that he’s find some completely insane way out of this than no normal person could have ever seen coming, that’s a given. I’d be very surprised if he wrote Bull out of the strip and I’d be equally surprised if the lovable hapless gym coach Bull suddenly became the hapless insane maniac who angrily stormed around forgetting things, as intriguing as that premise does seem. Imagine it, Bull suddenly thinks it’s 1980 and viciously beats Les to a bloody pulp, now THAT is promise. So rule that out.

Is it at all possible that Bull is just all annoyed about something else entirely and is just being badly misread by his wife? Like maybe she forgot their anniversary or something, I don’t know. Based on everything I know about FW I can say with some confidence that this is guaranteed to go nowhere, but how? Maybe it’ll turn out that he’ll “be fine” followed by a Bull-led crusade against concussions, that’s the most boring resolution I can come up with right off the top of my head.

Boys Go to Jupiter, to Get More Stupider

$$$WESTVIEW ONCOLOGIST$$$
June 13, 2016 at 9:09 am
It should be pointed out that much ballyhooed Marianne Winters STILL has not shown up. I’m leaning to the side that we will never see her in these strips.

“All right George, now you remember all those loveable, stupid Peorgie and Mudhead movies you were responsible for?”
“My goodness, I haven’t, uh, seen any of those in years…”
“Well, Georgie, what are you going to do when the original “Bottles”, Mudhead’s crazy, hopped up girlfriend, drops right through that celebrity trap door?”
“My…God…Oh, no, that woman’s trying to kill me!”

Starbuck 2016? The movie written and storyboarded by a couple of Westview losers? Filmed on location in Cleveland, Ohio? We couldn’t care less. “Classic” Starbuck? You mean that rollicking, life-altering, black and white serial film from the thirties forties fifties early sixties? Now we’re talkin’! If locating the leading man involved following the weakest of clues to track him down and invade his ratty New York City apartment, can you imagine the lengths Team Starbuck went to in order to dig up  Cliff’s leading lady, Vera…Vera Nash?

Ham Handed

The ass-lathering continues today as Kablichnick steps up to the plate. The normally dour and cranky science teacher positively gushes about how Starbuck Jones inspired him: “Follow our hearts”? “Do what we love”? “Succeed“? Teacher, please. When it comes to unbridled contempt  for one’s students, Jim Kablichnick makes Les Moore look like Mr. Chips. The only thing he loves about his job is the opportunity it provides for him to spout his views on climate change, interspersed with painfully unfunny “jokes.”  Cliff expresses his surprise at meeting someone gullible enough to have bought his line of hokum. And we all know about the Ovaltine, but do the Junior (hah!) Spacemen of America employ some kind of secret handshake? It looks like the ol’ Commodore greets his fans by grasping their clenched fists.

In Soviet Russia, the Buck Saves You!

Pity the readers of Funky Winkerbean whose newspapers do not also run Crankshaft (okay, go ahead and pity all FW readers, regardless). Of course beady-eyed, nitpicking hate-readers understand that the rapt little kid is the same one whose ghost we saw peering creepily back at Jeff from the attic window of his childhood home a couple weeks ago. And we know that the old geezer awkwardly shaking Cliff Anger’s hand is not Funky with glasses but is that same kid, now grown old. So Jeff finally achieves closure for his mommy issues, albeit in a different comic strip and ten or twenty (and one or two weeks) later. And if his gushing pronouncement sounds familiar, peep this 2011 Batiuk interview:

Interviewer: Some of the memorable storylines of that [first time jump] era, at least for me, were Lisa’s cancer and the comic book store obscenity trial that was mirroring the Jesus Castillo case. I still have Crazy’s witness stand testimony of how, when he was in high school, “…superheroes did what they did best… they saved me.” tacked up on my wall.

While he understands fuck-all about how modern motion pictures are made, and has long since abandoned any notion of continuity and character development, Batiuk maintains his laser focus on spreading the gospel of old comic books and movie serials.